A View on Leadership in the Air Force (conclusion)

In my previous post I talked briefly about the fact the military is not like a commercial enterprise and often the tools the civilian leaders attempt to impose on the force cause more disruption than increased efficiency.  Then I dealt with what I view as flaws in the leadership development scheme.  They were “Change is Good,” “A Rigged System,” and “First Command.”  In this post I intend to discuss the more serious flaws I believe lead to disillusionment and lowering moral.  They are “Building an Unsustainable Force,” “Social Justice is a Core Mission,” “A Lack of Personal Accountability,” and “Performance Reviews are Smoke.”

We have built an unstainable force and are unwilling to admit it.  Obviously, we operate within a defined and regulated budget and the amount of money available to pay for everything all the politicians in Congress, The President, and the SECDEF would like is finite.  The office of the SECDEF sets guidelines the AF leadership must comply with to stay within its budget.  It also projects the costs into the out-years so it can plan for the force and force modernization.  As the Air Force looks to modernize to 5^th Generation Fighters they sought ways to pare the single largest cost in the Air Force, its manpower bills.  Based on the choices available we drew the force down to a little over 320,000 as an end strength.  That number is climbing slightly but the force today is far below what it was when we had a cold war.  Today we have a warmish hot war and the force is asked to do far more than what it had ever been built to do prior to 9/11.  In 1960, when the threat of nuclear war was the principal challenge the USAF faced had 813,474 personnel to meet its global commitments.  As the Vietnam war grew so did the AF, reaching a peak strength of 905,314 in 1967.  During President Reagan’s years, the force stood around 600,000, or just a little less than twice its current strength.  Back then we were a garrison force where most people spent most of their time training with short TDYs and an expectation they would be home within a week or two of leaving.  The longer rotations of 90 days were usually at locations that offered some social time off.  Even with the longer deployments, the stress of the force was manageable and an individual could expect a high demand assignment followed by a relatively stable one.

After Desert Storm, we began moving from a garrison force to a rotational force as we closed base after base to reduce cost.  This has created a situation where significant numbers of personnel are pushed forward for 3, 4 or 6-month deployments at something that hovers around a 1 to 4 ratio.  Following 9/11 that ratio when down to about 1 to 2.5 and for those forces in demand the ratio often approaches a 1 to 1. While we have been doing this -- new demands continuously flow down, requiring short notice response and a total force commitment where Guard and Reserve forces now carry a much greater percentage of the load then they were ever envisioned.  Meanwhile, we close bases, retire aircraft, and further reduce the force until the only people left to deploy are those who are not up for a new assignment or school slot.  The toll on the humans in this cycle are measurable in terms of divorce, PTSD and other mental issues.  Suicides are up, DUI is up, and separations are up for those who see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Those who’ve been recognized for their high potential don’t seem to be subject to the same rotational demands as their peers for they are serving as executive officers, on a command staff, in professional development, or serving at the higher echelons of a joint force to get the credits necessary for flag rank.  The result is obvious.  To use a farming analogy, we are eating the seed corn of tomorrows crop of leaders and commanders.  Those positions will still exist, but the quality of the officers and senior NCO’s that will fill them will be less than it was. 

We have reduced our ability to fill the pipeline as we reduce training capacity in UPT and UCSO (UNT for old folks like me).  Of course, we did this for sound economic reasons, but when individuals in the prime of their capability abandon their career the inexperienced airman needed to replace them just don’t exist.  We see this especially in the UAV/RPA pipeline where again to save costs we are now beginning to qualify NCOs as “pilots.”

We will never say “we must do more with less,” because of past experiences but isn’t that exactly what we ask of your airman?

Social Justice has become a core task or mission.  When I entered the Air Force we were in the middle of the social unrest caused by the Vietnam war, but there was a more fundamental issue, and that was discrimination of the black minorities.  President Truman, over the objections of his senior military commanders, had integrated the armed forces in 1948, but still subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination existed in 1974 when I became a Lieutenant.  The CSAF mandated equality training for all personnel and we did this until the service grew tired and declared success in racial equality.

President Obama did the same thing as President Truman for the LGBT community, and now the service is in the process of training its force that LGBT personnel must be treated fairly and equally.  Personally, I think President Obama’s choice was better than the direction of President Clinton which was “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but there are some significant morality and social issues that come with mandating individual support and implied approval of sexual orientation that does not arise when we mandate people not be discriminated against because of their race.

As we see in the civilian culture we come from there is an increasingly militant approach to demanding that society view itself in accordance with the most vocal voices of a pretty small minority.  The service draws from society and those same forces are at work.  The senior leadership, just like in Truman’s years, have one view of the world and the younger airman another.  We see in President Trump an attempt to return to a policy that would bring us back to an earlier time.  In my opinion that is a foolish choice that will only compound the unrest and delay what must be the ultimate goal of integration into a cohesive fighting force.

Whatever your view on the current social justice diatribes, the services inability to provide a consistent policy where all are treated equally is demoralizing the force.  Today we have some who demand equality, and others who view the minorities as receiving an unfair advantage.  Both positions seem to be relatively small, but both are vocal enough to detract from the unit cohesion necessary in a fighting force.

Let’s discuss accountability.  The one thing a bureaucracy does really well is to provide a shield or buffer for accountability.  For example:

Customer service rep: We can’t approve your form 123.

Customer: Why?

Rep:  Well it’s our policy not to approve this form.

Customer:  What should I do to get this approved?

Rep:  You need to submit another form asking for approval of this form

Customer:  Is there someone I can talk to?

Rep:  No, you have to submit form 123 to talk to someone.

By most standards the Air Force is a pretty good bureaucracy to work for, its Commanders and Senior Leaders are frequently voicing their support for some magical thing called “empowerment” where a conversation like I illustrated above won’t happen.  But on the other hand, we have all developed a “cooperate and graduate” kind of mentality where failure, except in the most extreme or most public situations is kind of pushed aside, so careers are not adversely affected by those mistakes.

For example, how many flying squadron commanders have been relieved of command by their commanders, but still make O-6 because they’ve filled all the squares and the relieving authority didn’t want to hurt a good officer they just didn’t trust to lead anyone.  What message does this convey to the subordinates?

Then, of course, there are those who go from bungling one job after another and their commanders pass them off as quickly as possible so they don’t have to deal with them.  At the end of the day their career experiences are really broad and look good on paper and all the sudden they are promoted to senior ranks and seemingly no one knows why.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating we return to the days of flogging or making the guilty sit in the town square in stocks but having someone swinging from the yardarm occasionally might be okay.  (This is humor, and I point it out just in case some are unfamiliar with the concept.)

There is a business management consultant named Peter Drucker.  He is best known for his theory that business can never be really efficient because people are promoted at least one level above their competence.  This is known as the “Peter Principle.”  My experience in the Air Force suggested long ago we will generally promote at least two pay grades above competence based on the masking of competence in the promotion recommendation files.   Which brings me to my last flaw.

The Promotion System is Smoke and Mirrors.  We have reached a point in the evaluation process where secret words and phrases are more important than actually telling individuals how they perform in comparison to their peers.  For rated officers, how well you do your primary job is hardly ever a data point, unless you happen to earn a DFC or MOH and then it will be noted in your records that you did well.

The people who do the evaluations may or may not be taught how to evaluate people or what the secret words are, and if they don’t know the secret words - every one of the people they rate will suffer the consequence.  Of course, there are good leaders who will sit down with the people they lead and who will provide honest and candid feedback on how the individual is doing and areas they can improve on.  In attempting to formalize this feedback system into a mandated requirement complete with specific form the bureaucracy condemns the majority to a perfunctory interview with the rater where he/she is usually working to complete his/her task as quickly as possible since they have multiple people to advise/counsel.

There is a management technique referred to a “Management by Walking Around.”  Personally, I find this the best and most effective way to provide both the leader with a clear understanding of those who are working and those who aren’t as well as providing quality performance feedback to the organization.  The most important aspect of this is a rather common-sense rule that seems to be lost in today’s world.  The boss should not condemn or belittle the staff in public, but if a criticism is necessary it should be done on a one and one basis in private.

Then we come to the idea of feedback for the Commander.  In the traditional sense of organizational behavior feedback traditionally flows down, not up.  The bosses boss ultimately determines if they are doing a good job or not, but over the past twenty years, the Air Force has become (in theory at least) an organization concerned for the welfare of its entire force.  Routinely they conduct anonymous climate surveys to give the Wings and MAJCOMs feedback on how the minions are doing.  This is a nice tool, but I don’t think it provides the direct feedback that forces the Commanders to reassess their personal style or techniques.  As I said bureaucracies are good at maintaining a lack of accountability.

I wonder what would happen if, when it came time for a commander’s performance report to be written there was a required entry on organizational feedback where the subordinates got to rate the officer on three-point scale (Definitely Promote, Promote, Do Not Promote) and the statistical average was placed next to the recommendation of the Senior Rater.  What would the promotion boards look like if they had to consider evaluations from subordinates as well as the senior commanders?

Once, when I was speaking to a boss about how as we are paring down reports to the minimum possible explanation of impact and capability I wondered how the board would know who should really be considered for readiness for promotion.  Without thinking, he made a candid statement he realized immediately was a mistake.  He said, “Don’t worry the board members know who should be promoted.” He then went on to say, “What I mean to say is an entire record is considered.”  

If we could be completely candid perhaps we would change the reports to reflect some of the dry humor the British are so famous for.  Consider these for reference.

https://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/british.asp

Well, that’s about it for me.  I don’t have any answers to fix the problems, so perhaps I shouldn’t bother noting them, but I needed something to think and write about so this was as good as anything.

For those who are currently in mid-career, good luck.  Look for those choices you control and never believe you are a victim.  Remember, you control your life and your career, even when it’s not going as you envisioned.  Look for the good in your choices and keep moving forward.  Best wishes from an old Nav.

A View on Leadership in the Air Force

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The USAF has a retention problem.  Too many trained and qualified officers and airman are choosing to leave the service at the peak of their proficiency rather than serve to retirement.  A good friend posted a couple of opposing views on leadership in the USAF to discuss the current climate and how people we know are making a difference.  The articles got me to thinking about this subject, because it is one near to my heart and when I was a serving officer it was one I used to think about often.  I would return to it from time to time as a civil servant when we had a change in the senior leadership and new priorities were brought into the organization.  This seems a good time to put my thoughts together and see if I can be somewhat coherent with them.

I’ve written about this subject a number of times.  For example, here, here, here and here.  In the thousand or so posts I’ve written I am sure there are more, but these are enough. I doubt that anyone really cares deeply about my views on this subject, but for the record, I do have a degree in Organizational Behavior so the psychology of an organization and its leadership is something I have given a great deal of thought about.

First things first, a military organization is unique.  As much as civilians would like to compare it to industry – it just never translates smoothly.  For example, during the 1960’s Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense.  He had come into the administration from Ford and in his role he  attempted to bring all the management tools and policies he had developed at Ford.  He thought he could increase efficiency and reduce costs if we just practiced the sound commercial practices of a mighty U.S. industry.  During his tenure he was a supporter of FTX program (a one size fits all fighter for both the USAF and USN).  In trying to make one airplane do everything they came up with a good short-range bomber that was too heavy to land on any existing USN carrier and since it takes an act of God to cancel a DOD development program it went into production as the F-111 for the USAF.  In managing the growing war in Vietnam, they (President Johnson and SECDEF McNamara) attempted to guide our involvement in ways that ultimately condemned the effort to failure.  In the course of that war, they about destroyed the US Army.  On the bright side, the administration's failures helped shape officers who would understand the conflict and rise to create a military that was shaped to fight the conventional war in Europe but easily adapted to a desert theater that was perfectly suited for the tactics and doctrine they had written in FM 100-5.

What makes the military service unique is the workforce.  The workforce is young and usually trained to levels other industries could only hope for their employees, but there is also an expectation of those who are in the combat arms that at some point they may be confronted with life or death decisions that require their complete commitment to mission.  I can think of no other industry that asks so much of its young men and women, or places so much responsibility in an 18 to 30-year old as does the US Military.  In private industry, the 18 to 30-year olds are there to learn from the senior managers.  Certainly, they rarely lead. That is not the case for the military where a 22-year old Lieutenant may have 40 individuals and a few million dollars of equipment under his charge. 

That said, the USAF is different from the other military branches, both in its short heritage and its focus.  We are a service that grows directly from a technology.  The idea of the machine being paramount is fundamental to the DNA of the service.  When given a choice between a new machine and a person – the Air Force has inevitably deferred to the technology.  People are a necessary component to the operation of the technology, but in our quest for the better technology, we struggle to understand how to deal with the human component. 

What compounds this problem is the fact we are now engaged in a war we must fight but can’t possibly win.  The best we can hope for is the opposition will grow weary and decide to focus their outrage in another direction.  Finally, we have an evolutionary change in our society that leads the youngest members to enter the service with different social expectations than those of its senior leaders and commanders. In the past, there was an expectation the young would learn the social ways of the leadership, but today it appears to be a bit of the young teaching the old as the services change to meet the demands of the political leadership imposed by our Constitution.

It seems to me there are a number of issues coming to a head that has caused a cultural rift that drives our service culture to fragment and leads to dissatisfaction among the mid-level grades (both officer and non-commissioned officer).  The challenge for the most senior officers is to understand the flaws, but this is difficult.  They have succeeded in their careers and I suspect they candidly see little that should be changed. 

What are the flaws?

The first is an institutional belief that change is always positive and critical to career success.  No one gets a good performance report for maintaining the status quo.  Our future leaders are taught they must come in and make the unit better with their leadership.  Even if they do nothing, the performance reports must reflect a positive unit improvement in moral, mission, and capability.

The second is the rigged system.  When we, as an institution, choose the individuals who will be placed on the path to the stars we do so at a point they barely know the Air Force, let alone how to lead.  When we were a much younger AF we had to take our leaders from the other services or those who were around when the AF was born.  As we’ve matured the Academy has, just like the other Services, become the training ground from which the majority will be chosen.  In practice – we choose 26 to 28-year olds who show promise and put them on a sheltered path where the best assignments and right jobs are set at their feet.  If they don’t screw up they will be promoted ahead of their peers and be eligible for promotion to flag rank.  The unfortunate consequence of this is they have little or no perspective on the problems of an average career officer or NCO.

The third goes back to the second.  For those who are supposed to be the crème de la crème of the Air Force we really don’t allow them to be responsible for actual welfare of humans until just before they are eligible for promotion to Colonel (about the 18-year point), and then for fighter pilots they will command 24(ish) Type-A personalities who want to be the next Chuck Yeager.  For other rated officers they may command squadrons up to a couple of hundred people but for the first time in their lives, they will have to make life and career choices that affect real live people.  Remarkably, we have something over a 90% success rate in this.  Which begs the question, is the rigged system really right or do we adjust our expectations to reinforce its rightness? 

There is one exception to this.  In this war, battlefield airman have risen in stature to levels never anticipated.  Their officers and NCO’s follow a leadership model more closely aligned with the Army.  To succeed they must deal with the human element from the time they are Lieutenants, but I hazard a guess that a CCT officer or CRO will not be a CSAF in my lifetime.

To be continued.

On the Growing of a Leader (pt 4)

Leadership in Today's World

To talk about this, we need to consider the requirements, the risks, and the rewards that go into making the choices of leadership.  To prepare for this discussion I pulled up the Darryl F. Zanuck movie, “Twelve O’Clock High.” When I was a young officer this movie was often cited as an example of the challenges of a commander. Although a dramatic story, it captures the essence of leadership and perhaps some of the pitfalls we in the AF fall into.  For those not familiar with the story, it centers on the fortunes of the 918^th Bomb Group operating out of RAF Archbury in 1942.  Accordingly, they are one of the first groups attempting to implement the USAAF concept of daylight precision bombing.  They are a “hard luck” group led by a Colonel Keith Davenport whose men love him, and who defends them even when they make mistakes.  The Commander of 8^th AF relieves the Colonel and he is replaced by a former Group Commander, Brig Gen Frank Savage.  The story is told from the perspective of his ground exec, and shows the Commander’s struggle to bring the organization up to combat effectiveness and support the “Maximum Effort” the 8^th AF is attempting to achieve.  In a small, almost unnoticeable scene, at about 35 minutes into the movie BG Savage is arriving at the station to assume command, and has his driver stop short.  He had been sitting in the front seat and refers to the driver by name, they share a smoke and then moments later he says “Alright Sargent!” He climbs into the back seat of the staff car and heads into base where he is casually waived through.  He has the car stop, gets out and chews out the sentry.  He is setting the tone for what is to come.

My takeaways from this film reflect the unmistakable need for a commander to establish clear expectations, build unit cohesion and pride, and recognize both the good and bad in the organization and deal effectively with both. It also shows the fine line between the commander’s involvement, the emotional stress of command and the dedication needed to see the organization succeed.  So let’s talk about those qualities briefly.

Setting clear expectations.  We hear much in the service today about expectations and performance, but those expectations from on high seem to change on a constant basis, partially as a result of societal changes, but more often from the political influences of the civilian leadership charged with supporting the President’s agenda while shaping the service.  Young men and women enter the service knowing only what they’ve been taught by the educational system, their views of acceptable behavior and the traditional views of the service have grown further apart.  So the question for leadership today is how to form those impressionable young airmen into adults who understand the mission and the consequences of their acts?  That is always the challenge. 

In an ideal world, every future leader would understand that every decision and choice they make is an opportunity to set expectations and follow through with them, unfortunately in today’s world of second guessing and senior commander’s who are more worried about their own careers than the organizations success – young men and women are often not allowed the opportunity, or are so cowed by the possibility of failure, that those choices must be approved by others before they are made.  The conflicting messages sent by commanders and the reality the young officers observe around them confuse even the clearest thinkers.  We are not “a one mistake AF” and the crucifixion of pilots who text what their commanders believe to be inappropriate messages sends a clear a signal that we no matter what the CSAF says, the AF leadership under him believes something different.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize we are, in fact, a one mistake Air Force where you career can be derailed for being a 27-year-old with a $35-million-dollar airplane and spare time on your hands.

Building unit cohesion and pride. As shown in the movie, and as has been proven time and time again is at the heart of any successful organization, whether it be a squad of soldiers, a flight of airman or a ship on the high seas is the pride and commitment that the humans in that organization make to accomplish the mission and support each other.  Studies have show that one of the great failures of the Vietnam conflict was the replacement of individual soldiers with new people who would be there for a year.  The Army ground units lost a lot in terms of unit pride, directly relating to combat effectiveness.  I watched a squadron in England almost destroy itself when the commander and the operations officer chose to conduct a personality battle over who would run the squadron.  Everyone had to choose sides and when the operations officer eventually replaced the commander, much like a lion taking over a pride, he killed the careers of all the people who had sided with his predecessor.  Today we call this toxic leadership, then it was overlooked to the point they were both promoted for successful command.  Which brings up the next point.

Recognizing both the good and bad in an organization.  Most of us are kind and forgiving by nature, and in the AF we are trained to highlight the successes of our organization and its personnel.  The personnel evaluations have become so cryptic and nonsensical as to require special decoder rings to determine if one is a good evaluation or a bad evaluation.  We seem to have little problem praising our people, but a terribly tough time telling the airman where they are failing, or are not as good as others.  This holds true for all levels of command.  It is, as it probably should be, that officers are rarely removed from command, but that role has now become a square to be filled, rather than a challenge to be sought.  As long as we have an evaluation system that is obtuse, expectations for performance based on personal likes or dislikes, and criteria that makes performance at academic institutions more important than actual job performance we will grow future leaders who care more about their careers than the mission.  We need to start with honest evaluations of all officers, not just perfunctory feedback sessions, but honest feedback on where a subordinate is strong and where he or she is weak.  Perhaps an evaluation form that required the rater to identify strengths and weakness, rather than accomplishments and key praises like “combat proven” and a fixed assessment against his organizational peers, with the removal of various tactics like “thin slicing” might be useful.  How to overcome this human desire to be the good guy and get all the people promoted is the real challenge.

There are always challenges… today we live in a politically correct world where sensitivity to others, the second guessing of decisions made, and the spotlight of the instant global communication grid are always lurking in the wings.  Yesterday there were other issues, tomorrow there will be still others.  The question for a leader is how to blend those outside political aspects with the need to accomplish the mission and inspire your subordinates to achieve more than they think possible?

A great organizer can accomplish remarkable things as far as establishing an organization, acquiring or selling a product, or reaching a milestone, but a great leader will inspire the next generation of humans who will carry out the mission both now and in the future. The success of an individual in command is not an insular success, it depends on the successes of those he or she leads. Take for example, John F. Kennedy, if you look at the actual accomplishments of his career they are not all that remarkable, but if you look at the vision he put forth, and the accomplishments of those he inspired through his leadership and death they are spectacular.

A Few Thoughts on Leadership

   The other evening, I had a chance to chat for a few minutes with a young man I first met about ten years ago.  At the time he was awaiting assignment after washing out of F-15 training and was told he would be going to EC-130H aircraft at Davis-Monthan.  He had been a navigator before pilot training, had been among the top of his class in pilot training, and wanted to go someplace where the mission would be more exciting then just flying in circles.

    We had chatted about a new aircraft AFSOC was just beginning to the field and he was very interested.  The U-28 is a light corporate aircraft we have adapted for battlefield surveillance.  My feeble attempts to get him an assignment went for naught, but he met someone who was flying the aircraft, and they introduced him to the Squadron Commander who was able to get his assignment changed.

   

I next ran into him about a year later and he was excited to be flying this aircraft, making a contribution to our combat operations.  A couple of more years passed and I ran into again and he was recently married with a young son.  He was starting to get burned out on the 90-days gone, 90-days home, 90-days gone routine and was hoping for a new assignment that would give him some control of his life.

   

This week was the first time we had a chance to chat in about three or four years and he and his wife now had three young children in tow on their way the Ci-Ci’s Pizza.  I asked how he was doing and he explained that he had gotten out of the Air Force at the 16-year point and has taken a job as a civilian contract instructor at the U-28 school house.  He had reached a point where he had to consider the needs of his family and their was little to no hope of the Air Force providing him a better or more stable life then they had this past decade.  The wars were not ending, the manning levels not improving, deployment schedules becoming less frequent, or a likelihood of a better job.  He was stuck in a cockpit with no way out except by getting out of the Air Force.

    Our commanders do a great job of telling everyone how important they are, but at the end of the day we make little effort to care for anyone other than those who seem preordained to be Generals.  At one point we had gone so far as to change the assignment codes for pilots and navigators on the staff so that anyone but a Special Ops pilot or nav could apply.  The argument was there were too few SOF aircrew to release them from the flying jobs.  Consequently, they are now coming up for promotion to senior ranks and do not compete with their peers who have had the opportunity to expand their skills.

    We wonder aloud why we have problems with retention and experience and look everywhere but at ourselves.  Every General I’ve worked for has had an agenda, every one sets goals and objectives, some want new aircraft, others think we can do everything ourselves, others believe we need the latest technology available.  We universally mourn the loss of warriors killed on the battlefield or in training, but we place the burden of the war on the shoulders of our young airman until they can no longer take it.  For the lucky this leads to a choice between their careers and their families, for too many it is a choice between life and death.  

If we are to face the cost of war, we must at some point have Generals who tell our politicians “We cannot do this without experienced and motivated people.” “You cannot shrink my active force to a level where we never allow the average Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine to control their own life and compete for a career in the service of his or her country.”  As it is we trade the welfare of our people for the brightest and shiniest new objects we can find.

There is a Difference

As former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil said, “All politics is local.” This speaks to the human condition that puts self-interest first.  When given a choice it is reasonable to assume that unless there is some obvious gain to the individual they will oppose change if they perceive a personal cost.  This is where we are now, where our leaders no longer lead with a strong vision, but endlessly campaign based on selling to the selfish nature of man.  There is a difference between political self-interest and leadership.

On the one hand, we have a party that has moved far to the left, promising all the riches of the land to those who keep them in power.  To accomplish this they encourage those political activities that divide the nation, and create class warfare, denying any role in the creation of laws that set the foundation for that division.

I am reminded of the words of our founding fathers -- as written in the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those on the left have twisted this idea to imply all men must be equal in all things.  Those with the courage to make these declarations did not say, nor did they imply, that all men must be equal in all things.  They did challenge the argument on the divine right of kings, but they realized that being created equal did not guarantee that equality through life.  These men represented their states, but were among the educated elite and upper social structure.  They were the 1% of the day.

As a youth, I was taught that America was a land of opportunity and you could rise to any station in life based on your talent, initiative, skill and desire.  We start as equals but have the opportunity to become more.  Now the left would have us believe that those precepts are wrong and it is the government that has made it possible for the few to rise from humble beginnings to great fame, influence, or wealth.  They rally around the cry from the junior Senator from Massachusetts “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.”[1]

Those rich people deserve to be taxed at a much higher rate because they are successful so that those who are not can be subsidized.  In the past it was an individual’s sense of obligation that drove the successful to share that wealth, not the strong hand of the government.  I believe the junior Senator’s approach is at best insincere and most likely self-serving.  If she was indeed interested in equity she would look at all inequity, not just that that plays well with the poor.

For example, let us take the junior Senator’s former employer.  As a Harvard professor, she worked for a corporation that has millions in its endowment fund, has among the highest tuitions in the nation and continues to operate at a profit, paying its tenured professors 6-figure salaries, and yet pays no taxes…  Why aren’t we pushing to make all colleges pay their fair share of taxes?  Has being classified as a non-profit organization truly opened up the possibility of education for all, or has it led to massive income for those organizations based on the government pushing sky-high student debt as a means to an end?  I believe it because the voices rising up so loud about income equality come from those institutions and are acting in their own selfish interest.

On the other side of the political coin are those pulling far to the right, where there should be no new taxes, or better yet corporate tax should be lowered so those businesses become richer.  They propose we pay no welfare, abandon the modernization of our infrastructure, and return us to a time when we did not care for those who struggle in a time of need. Trusting in the sense of morality of the rich to share their wealth but is this legitimate.  As I look around I think of the politicians pursuing this philosophy, like those in opposition, who are looking for the rich to serve their self-interest with the purchase of political support they can afford.

What I see in government today is the dominance of political self-interest, and not leadership in the sense I was taught.  No one, in a position to influence the future of the nation, seems to be willing to move to a rational position and bear the criticism of those that oppose what is good for the nation.  Campaigning has become the full time profession of everyone from the President down to the lowest city councilman.  Leadership, if it exists, is an unintended consequence of picking the right campaign slogan and nothing more.

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[1] http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/factory-owner-speech/

Poor Social Skills

I would make a poor politician.  I like my privacy, I don’t like to mingle with people I don’t know or share a common bond with, I can leave most organizational parties within a few minutes of arriving and I am terrible at small talk.  But I have to believe an effective politician is one who can build networks, communicate ideas, and when necessary socialize with both friends and opponents to find common ground for good legislation.

I find it amazing we have elected a President who does not believe it is necessary to associate with other politicians New York Times, "Bipartisan Agreement: Obama Isn’t Schmoozing".  This explains so much about why we see the President telling people what they need to do, not rolling up his sleeves to help make it happen. 

I don’t envy anyone who thinks they want to be President, and I doubt the job comes with an instruction manual, but if you want to say you are the leader of the nation, there has got to be something besides your inner circle of friends involved in the process.  As the article points out, President Jimmy Carter, felt himself an outsider and did not socialize enough when he was in office.  President Clinton, on the other hand had no problems with small group gatherings.  You can decide who was more effective, the one who lost his office because of runaway unemployment, high interest rates and failed military operations, or the one who served two terms with an adversarial Congress and managed to leave with a balanced budget?

The Difference Between Arrogance and Confidence

There is a difference between being confident and just being arrogant.  It is simple and unmistakable to those who look for it.  Arrogance is a sense of entitlement based on a belief you are better than others and clearly deserve to get your way.  Confidence doesn’t depend on others, it is a belief in your own abilities and the quiet certainty you know what is right.

As we look at our political leadership I wonder how you would classify them?